US, EU’s ‘Pledge Against Protectionism’ a cover up of crimes of globalization, says PH farmers

Original Publication Date:

16 December, 2011

Reference: Jim Fernando, KMP Campaign Officer

GENEVA, Switzerland – The activist peasant group Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (Peasant Movement of the Philippines – KMP) today assailed the “Pledge Against Protectionism” statement being circulated and asked for signing by countries headed by the United States and European Union at the 8th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva, Switzerland.

“The circulation of the ‘anti-protectionism document’ is a desperate move to cover up the crimes of imperialist globalization against the broad masses of people,” says Jim Fernando, KMP Campaign Officer.

“US and EU spin doctors are now obscuring the truth that the rotten and bankrupt paradigm of so-called “free market” globalization is the main cause of the global economic and financial crisis,” he said.

Obviously, Fernando said, “the pledge is aimed to undermine the world people’s growing clamor for genuine development and of countries defending their national economies from the continuing onslaught of globalization.”

The KMP also called on the Philippine delegation to the WTO not to sign the document saying it would be a big shame for the Philippine government to sign the document.

“Signing this anti-national and anti-people document is tantamount to a pledge of total US re-colonization of the Philippines,” the KMP warned.

The peasant group maintained that after 17 years of membership in the WTO, Philippine agriculture and the Filipino peasantry has been hardly hit by the policies of liberalization, deregulation, and privatization of the economy. The country has become more vulnerable to global land grabbing, food insecurity, job insecurity, hunger and poverty.

“Widespread land grabbing and forced eviction of peasants from their farmlands is the worst impact of agricultural trade liberalization in the Philippines. While increasing its reliance on food importation, the Philippine government is seeking so-called investments and surplus finance capital in exchange of the total sell-out of agricultural lands to advanced capitalist countries,” the KMP said. #